Pixel Scroll 6/8/17 The Pixel Who Circumnavigated Filerland In A Scroll Of Her Own Making

So we’ve been at this Villain of the Month thing for a while now — since August 2016, to be precise — and by this point we’ve accumulated an interesting roster of villains….

First up, we have the True Believer (the Operative, Dolores Umbridge). True Believers have a cause to which they are faithfully devoted. That’s not to say they lack other ambitions — wealth, for example, or glory — but those take a back seat to one all-important ideological goal. For the Operative, that goal is creating “a world without sin”. For Umbridge, it’s a fascist regime ruled by the Ministry of Magic. Villains who obsequiously serve a Dark Lord (e.g. Bellatrix Lestrange) or fight to preserve the existing order (e.g. Agent Smith) would also fall into this category. For me, the most interesting True Believers are those fighting for a cause the audience could nominally get behind (e.g. the aforementioned world without sin), but whose methods are beyond the pale….

Such are the absurdities of the fossil-fuel lifestyle we are locked into globally, folly piling upon folly, the latest among them the decision by the United States to pull out of a Paris Climate Agreement that itself is like a band-aid applied to an earthquake. (Its target is to limit the global rise in temperature to between 1.5 and 2 degrees centigrade but, since it comes into effect only in 2020, it is seen by many critics as putting such a target beyond reach.) Yet in spite of all the evidence of the destruction visited upon the world by our resource-heavy appetites, accompanied by a gnawing recognition that something is fundamentally wrong in our relationship with the Earth and in the way we live, and all the cumulative knowledge about climate change and the irreplicable characteristics of an era that some have named the Anthropocene, the end result is still a kind of imaginative fatigue.

This makes itself evident in the paucity of fiction devoted to the carbon economy, something the Brooklyn-based Indian writer Amitav Ghosh addresses in his marvelous recent book, The Great Derangement, writing, “When the subject of climate change occurs . . . it is almost always in relation to nonfiction; novels and short stories are very rarely to be glimpsed within this horizon.”

One of the most entertaining things I’ve gotten to do in the background worldbuilding for the hexarchate is its popular culture. For example, in Ninefox Gambit, my heroine Cheris spends her free time watching crackalicious TV shows (“dramas”). In Raven Stratagem, one of the Kel recalls a classmate who used to read trashy adventures involving “dungeon-crawling” in the bowels of the campus. And it also reveals that Jedao’s mom used to like reading equally trashy sci-fi novels involving survivalists and tentacled monsters from outer space. Just because she’s a science fantasy character doesn’t mean she can’t like sci-fi, right?

(4) INDIGENOUS VOICES. Silvia Moreno-Garcia and Robin Parker have succeeded in creating the Emerging Indigenous Voices Awards, which is now hosted by the Indigenous Literary Studies Association. And the ILSA has announced the award judges. (No excerpt, because the news item is one big image file — not text!) ILSA has set a funding target of $150,000 to”make the award sustainable for many years to come.” As of this writing, the Indiegogo appeal has raised $109,298 (Canadian). [H/T to Earl Grey Editing.]

(5) TIPTREE FELLOWSHIP REPORTS. The two 2016 Tiptree Fellowship winners have reported on how their work has been facilitated by the fellowships. [H/T to Earl Grey Editing.]

Here’s what I’ve been up to since I got the Tiptree fellowship. I made Miniskirt World Network: Business Slut Online, a video/music hypertext about a femme vaporwave world where fashion is a basic computer peripheral. I wanted to evoke the contradictory tensions of feminine-coded clothing and the weird emotional textures that come with it.

I cannot separate my being Filipino, of the Philippines, from my being a woman; they are inextricably intertwined. Thanks to the Tiptree Fellowship I was able to examine this intertwining more closely through my art. Life has not been easy this past year and between trying to keep my household afloat and taking care of my own health, I’ve had less time than I would have liked to work on my art series built around the concept of Filipinas as monsters, monstrosity reclaimed and embraced. Still, I’d like to share with you some work-in-progress pencils and concept sketches featuring both high fantasy settings and the supernatural as the second skin of our everyday.

By now most superhero fans with an eye for gender representation will have noticed a discrepancy between males and females with superpowers in comic movies, fantasy, science fiction, etc., etc.. Where the men either immediately or eventually see their superpowers as a gift, and the testing and mastery of the powers as a thrilling ‘coming of age’ story (or montage), women face a different road ahead. Often, the surfacing of a latent or new superpower is treated as an illness: something to hide, remove, control, or at the very least suspect as a problem to be solved (no matter how cool those superpowers may be). For every ‘Professor X’ there is a Jean Grey, for every Flash there is a Killer Frost, for every super-fast Quicksilver, there is a mentally-traumatized Scarlet ‘Witch.’

It’s a gender difference that means men will typically exert power by hitting things, while women are given powers rendering them unpredictable, mentally unstable, or simply tied to forces from an ‘unknown, mystical, potentially harmful’ source. But with Wonder Woman, Diana’s discovery of her ability to punch straight through stone is treated as the world-altering, empowering, and thrilling gift the viewers would take it to be. After smashing her hand through the stone in a frantic fall, Diana deduces that she is stronger than any Amazon before her

The Nebula Awards Showcase volumes have been published annually since 1966, reprinting the winning and nominated stories of the Nebula Awards, voted on by the members of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America (SFWA). This year’s editor, selected by SFWA’s anthology Committee (chaired by Mike Resnick), is Canadian science fiction and fantasy writer and editor Julie Czerneda. This year’s Nebula Award winners are Naomi Novik, Nnedi Okorafor, Sarah Pinsker, and Alyssa Wong, with Fran Wilde winning the Andre Norton Award for Young Adult Science Fiction and Fantasy Book. Also included in this volume are works by N. K. Jemisin and Ann Leckie.

June 8, 1984 — Ghostbusters is released in theaters across the United States.

(11) TODAY’S BIRTHDAY BOY

June 8, 1910 — John W. Campbell, Jr

(12) BRYANT MEMORIAL. George R.R. Martin tells about attending the memorial service for Ed Bryant in “Saying Farewell”.

Ed was a talented writer and a great workshopper, who mentored and encouraged many writers younger than himself and helped them on their way. He was one of my Wild Cards authors, creator of Sewer Jack and Wyungare. But most of all he was a sweet, kind man, with a warm smile and a gentle wit. Science fiction and fantasy will be poorer without him. Memorials like this are not for the deceased so much as they are for those left behind, I believe. It was good to get together with so many others who cared about Ed, and to share our memories of him, with laughter and love.

Africa is rich and the West is poor. That’s the setting for Queen Idia’s Africa: Ten Short Stories by Cordelia Salter with a foreword by Zeinab Badawi.

This is a world where slavery and colonialism never happened and Africa is the rich global superpower.

The West is mired in poverty, politically unstable and relies on aid from Africa. Zeinab Badawi, Chair of the Royal African Society, points out in the foreword that the stories make us think what things could have been like if the boot had been on the other foot.

What would Africa do about swarms of illegal European migrants trying to get to Africa in search of a better life? How would Africa respond to droughts, famines and rebel warfare in North America? Could there have been apartheid the other way round?

Alderman will be one of five judges, chaired by award-winning writer and television presenter, palaeontologist and Royal Society Fellow, Richard Fortey. They are joined by: writer and presenter of BBC Radio 4’s All in the Mind, Claudia Hammond, Channel 4’s Topical Specialist Factual Commissioner, Shaminder Nahal and former Royal Society University Research Fellow, Sam Gilbert.

The Prize has worked with many eminent judges over its illustrious 30-year history, among them Ian McEwan, Sarah Waters, Terry Pratchett, David Attenborough, Tracy Chevalier and Michael Frayn.

The Prize celebrates outstanding popular science books from around the world and is open to authors of science books written for a non-specialist audience. Over the decades, it has championed writers such as Stephen Hawking, Jared Diamond, Stephen Jay Gould and Bill Bryson.

Naomi Alderman commented: “It’s a terrible shame that arts and sciences are so often seen as mutually opposed, and that there’s so little understanding of what makes great work in ‘the other’ culture. So many of the most urgent problems that face us today can only be solved by thinking in an interdisciplinary way. That’s why I’m particularly thrilled to be a judge of this Prize, where we’ll be looking both for great science and excellent writing and storytelling. There’s no reason that a science book can’t be a bloody good read, and I can’t wait to get stuck in, and to discuss the best new science writing with the other judges.”

No law…no conscience…no mercy. Amoral, shrouded in secrecy, and answering to no one, Section 31 is the mysterious covert operations division of Starfleet, a rogue shadow group pledged to defend the Federation at any cost.

The discovery of a two-hundred-year-old secret gives Doctor Julian Bashir his best chance yet to expose and destroy the illegal spy organization. But his foes won’t go down without a fight, and his mission to protect the Federation he loves just end up triggering its destruction.

Only one thing is for certain: this time, the price of victory will be paid with Bashir’s dearest blood.

Astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson received the Stephen Hawking Medal for Science Communication Tuesday (June 6), becoming the first American scientist to earn the prestigious award.

Tyson, who refers to himself as “your personal astrophysicist,” is most known for his television series “Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey” and podcast-turned-television-series “StarTalk.” He is the director for the Hayden Planetarium at the American Museum of Natural History here in New York City, where Tuesday’s announcement was made.

The Stephen Hawking Medal is an annual award created in association with the Starmus Festival, an international gathering celebrating science and art that will take place in Trondheim, Norway, on June 18-23 this year. Medals are given to science communicators in three categories: writers, musicians and artists, and people in the film and entertainment industry. Hawking, a famous theoretical physicist and author of several best-selling books about the universe, handpicks the recipients himself. [The Most Famous Astronomers of All Time]

[JURASSIC PARK – THE FILM]. CRICHTON, MICHAEL, DAVID KOEPP. Original Limited and Numbered Confidential Shooting Script for the Film ‘Jurassic Park’ by David Koep. Based on the Novel by Michael Crichton and on Adaptations by Michael Crichton and Malia Scotch Marmo. Los Angeles: Amblin Entertainment, 1992. Original limited and numbered copy of a 126 page shooting script with color rewrite pages for the film ‘Jurassic Park’ by David Koep, based on the novel by Michael Crichton and on adaptations by Michael Crichton and Malia Scotch Marmo. A special printed page at the beginning reads: “HIGHLY CONFIDENTIAL – You are a part of a very limited distribution. This numbered copy of JURASSIC PARK has been assigned to you and is for your eyes only.” next to which “JP” and “64” are stamped in red and throughout the script. This copy belonged to the film’s safety coordinator

The results of the 2015 experiment were dramatic and explosive. The recommendations of the Sad Puppies (and also those put forward by the Rabid Puppies) dominated the 2015 Hugo Nominations. John C. Wright received five nominations in three categories (he initially was awarded a sixth slot, but one was revoked on a technicality). The Hugo nominee list changed over the coming weeks. Aside from the aforementioned instance, some nominees chose to decline their nomination (Hugo nominees have this option and can decline for any reason they like — some original nominees did not approve of the Sad or Rabid Puppies and did not wish to have any connection with them, and others objected that they believed that the voting process was being corrupted), and the slots were then filled by the runners-up. Incidentally, Correia’s Monster Hunter Nemesis received enough votes to qualify for a Best Novel nomination, but he turned down the nod to make the point that Sad Puppies was not being organized in order to receive honors for himself.

There’s two groups, the old guard burnout mentality, and the new indie pulp revolution. There’s a bit of a line up along political lines, but not as much as you’d expect, and in fact, that’s used as an excuse a lot of the time to poo poo the new. This is the state of science fiction today. I’ve talked about it briefly before, but here’s a broader look at the experiences I’ve had after engaging with both.

Old Guard

You walk into social media, or a group, or a convention of what I called the “old guard”, they’e hesitant. They’re the type to complain that they’re introverts, having to recharge after social interactions (which is fine to be, but knowing that — why complain so often?). A new person is immediately greeted with a stand-offish attitude, like they have to vet you to make sure you’re “really one of them” or that you have to pay your dues to prove yourself somehow. They’re hyper-political. If you look at their social media posts, 70-90% of them are endless shrieking about politics they don’t like. They keep talking about how they’re too busy for anyone or anything — including the next generation of fans and writers. And this is all before they know that you’re on the “wrongthink” side of politics.

(22) WE INTERRUPT THIS PROGRAM. The Coode Street Podcast will take a couple of breaks this year. The announcement provoked this hilarious exchange.

The Coode Street Podcast will be on hiatus from 1-31 August 2017 and from 15 November 2017 to 15 January 2018.

(23) ALTERNATE REALITY HUMOR. It might be too late for this to be funny — Loki Runs For President, a video from last November. (Was it funny then? It’s basically somebody talking a mile a minute over scans of a comic book.)

(24) APE CLIP. Two minutes of War for the Planet of the Apes about “Meeting Nova.”

(2) Stayed up all night (literally) reading the new LJ Cohen novel “Parallax”, which deals heavily with climate change from the perspective of after. Yes, we have shiny colonies other places and FTL through wormholes… nope, still got human problems from what they call “The Drowning”. It’s called “cli-fi”, dude, look into it.

(3) I loved her watching the future telenovelas with the robots.

(6) Hee! I was very amused by that. We could have a Filer meetup at the Wombat Conservancy! (But I’m not organizing it)

One problem with the US committing to initiatives like the Paris Climate Agreement is that the federal government doesn’t always have the power to commit the individual states. In this case, the states can join the agreement individually. Hawaii has already voted to join. Those supporting the agreement can always write their congress persons and suggest this.

Gregory Benford: Geez, do homework: van Gelder, Welcome to the Greenhouse, years ago…

It’s bizarre, isn’t it? Not only do the article’s author and the author they quote not seem to have read very widely, they apparently think that they are well-read enough to comment on the subject, and don’t have any recognition that, in fact, their reading experience has been very limited.

Although he does not give a crap about actual physics or other sciences (as we’ve discussed here before), Bacigalupi writes about climate change. KSR’s latest, “New York: 2140”. A solid chunk of YA novels. Someone needs to send PW and whoever wrote this crap a nice link to all the novels about the topic so they can edumacate themselves. Dunning-Kruger rears its ugly head again.

IMO what they mean is, no “literary” authors write fiction about climate change, therefore no such books exist. La-la-la, stick fingers in their ears.

(Climate Change Books) hahah oh holy crap wow I actually just finished The Girl in the Road this week, set X decades into the future where floods and rising water levels have sank various cities and weather events are getting out of control – how did I forget! I mean ok I got kinda bored towards the end, such a promising start but… meh… not all that much payoff imo, and kind of super obvious twists/revelations for the most part.

(20) Much to my surprise, NerdHQ actually approved the comments for Chris Chan’s apologist first article recounting of the Sad Puppies, including mine. I noticed that in part two, he presented a rather one-sided view of the interaction between LJL and PNH as recounted by JCW who wasn’t even present. What’s the matter, couldn’t he get a comment from PNH? LJL thanked him for his fair take on the subject though. (Apologies if I’ve got Chris Chan’s gender incorrect.)

(2) I don’t read PW, but maybe it’s just a case of “what have you written lately (i.e., since Trump became President)?”. After all, when was the last time cli-fi got a major SF award? For best novel, I figure it’s either 2013 (KSR’s 2312) or 2010 (PB’s Wind-up Girl), depending on whether 2312 counts as cli-fi, since I think of 2312 as more murder mystery in space with a climate-based post-apocalyptic background.

The climate fiction article specifically says that literary fiction writers aren’t writing it, leaving it to genre fiction. So they admit the books exist, they just aren’t important. *koff*

Adding to the list of climate fiction by literary writers: Gold Fame Citrus by Claire Vaye Watkins, in which much of the western US is under a giant, shifting sand dune. Not something I loved, but it’s okay. It made many best of year lists for 2016. (The title, which I liked once I realized what it meant, refers to things people went to California in search of.)

@JJ: I’m sorry, I guess I need a <sarcasm> tag. I had hoped that by calling his pieces apologistic, calling the JCW account between LJL and PNH one sided and lacking PNH’s side (oh, I forgot to mention that in the article, PNH was unnamed), one would realize that I didn’t agree with LJL’s comment thanking Chan for being fair (and thoughtful!).

(21) Maybe it’s just JDA, maybe it’s a west coast thing, but at the cons I go to in the Twin Cities, there are plenty of indie writers in attendence and on panels, and I don’t see them getting snubbed. I’m on an any programming committees though, and the indie writers I know don’t seem to wear right wing Christian auras.

Bruce A: Maybe it’s just JDA, maybe it’s a west coast thing, but at the cons I go to in the Twin Cities, there are plenty of indie writers in attendence and on panels, and I don’t see them getting snubbed. I’m on an any programming committees though, and the indie writers I know don’t seem to wear right wing Christian auras.

I’m not a writer, either, but at Worldcons I see plenty of indie authors at panels and on panels, and I haven’t seen any of that behavior. That isn’t conclusive proof that it’s not happening — but if it is, it’s not blatantly obvious.

I strongly suspect that, as he has done previously, JDA is falsely attributing peoples’ reactions to his poor social behavior to the fact that he’s an indie author or a political conservative, rather than to the fact that he’s a huge jerk who likes to harass people and who tells lies on an habitual basis. Based on the comments I saw in a couple of glimpses of his blog, and on his Twitter posts, it sounds as though the warm reception he’s getting is from people who are of *cough* similar mindsets.

@Bruce A: The panels this year at Baycon were chock-full of indie authors, maybe more than ever! I don’t know their politics at all, but they didn’t act like pains in the ass. Could have been precinct captains for Trump for all I know, but they had manners and were polite to the organizers and other fen.

Wasn’t there someone here who WAS on the scene (in witnessing distance) of LJL’s harassment of PNH, who saw and heard her insisting on talking to him, pursuing him, after he had politely indicated he didn’t want to? No means no!

Between that and CUL’s attempted SWATting of Gerrold/the con, the Pups got off really lucky in Spokane with only the embarrassment of losing at the Hugos. A stricter application of the CoC such as MACII impartially applied to everyone would have seen them tossed. I daresay Helsinki, San Jose, Dublin, NZ are going to apply the CoC more strictly than Spokane did as well.

Funny thing, I’ve been to two cons this year — a big comic con and a fan-run con, and at neither of them did I hear anyone complain about the CoC/anti-harassment policies. It was as much common sense that you don’t hassle people as that you don’t blow cigarette smoke in children’s faces.

Not to say problems didn’t occur — I don’t work security — but no one was all huffy about a CoC existing. Didn’t hear anyone complaining in the ladies’ rooms, and at the comic con, people were asking before they took photos of the spandex-clad persons. Didn’t look like anyone’s fun was ruined, though there might have been some MRAs in their mom’s basements who didn’t show up for fear they’d have to use manners.

I’ve never seen a purer distillation of what the character is supposed to represent than the small kindness of her attempting to make a person feel good about himself for no more than the simple act of doing his job. Ultimately, Diana is an ambassador from one place to another place and the movie seemed to inherently understand that, even as it was losing itself in the normal superhero bombast during the third act.

Alternatively: Once the Asimov-Bradbury wing conceded to the Heinlein-Pournelle wing of the Democratic-Republican Party, the party was able to more completely focus on its platform…(from a brief history of United States Politics, 13th edition)

21: …and now we’ve got people with 7 years of self-proclaimed experience offering us histories of institutions that are almost a century old.

Indie Pulp types do do do!

Yeah, maybe. But you know, the old guard (as burnt out as they are) did also. Ever hear of APAs? Fanzines? Filking? Costuming? Convention Organizing?

At this juncture, it occurs to me that one of the differences between “then and now” (if there is much of a difference other than politicized crap) is that the burnt-squad expressed themselves through “amatuer” activities while also frequently pursuing professional status through traditional means (which were largely the only means until very recently, a fact often overlooked). They did both simultaneously.

Among other things, this helped fandom hang on to its non-commercial/merit-based culture. It’s why many old guard professionals can still be persuaded to involve themselves with the non-commercial side from time to time. They had their roots there, know the benefits they received and often see it as part of their “give a hand up” contribution to the community.

Now, straight to the dollars. Every writer for themselves…except where helping to promote you also promotes me.

Hugo-related question: I’ve seen several people saying that the October Daye series picks up in quality with the third book. Is it necessary to read the second in order to understand/appreciate the third?

Kip, my comment also was in the nature of a joke, being about the difference between PUBLISHERS WEEKLY, the weekly magazine for/about publishers, and PUBLISHER’S WEEKLY, evidently a weekly magazine owned by a single publisher.

There are two types of people. Those who are adults and can handle discussions and those who immediately pull the victim card and scream ‘wrongthink’ every time their feeble arguments get smacked down in real time.

In this case, the states can join the agreement individually. Hawaii has already voted to join. Those supporting the agreement can always write their congress persons and suggest this.

Nope! Congresspeople may have mana within their home states but do not hold any actual power.

@lurkertype: A stricter application of the CoC such as MACII impartially applied to everyone would have seen them tossed. How much do CoC deal with behavior outside the specific convention, rather than saying “If you do this, we will expel you.”? CUL was barred, but for conduct that the CoC I’ve seen don’t even contemplate.

@idontknow: …attempting to make a person feel good about himself for no more than the simple act of doing his job. I read that very differently, that she thought the vendor was personally producing something unique; just another bit of clueless-primitive-in-the-modern-city that I’d have called overplayed if the first several scenes hadn’t made clear that the Amazons were not only Brigadoonishly ignorant but were keeping Diana even more ignorant. (And it just occurred to me: does anything in canon explain why a Greek child was given a Roman name? I suspect the originator(s) felt that “Artemis” was too foreign-sounding, but I wonder whether it was ever explained.)

Oh, and somebody a few scrolls back was asking whether they needed to have read the preceding Kylara Vatta books to make sense of Cold Welcome. My take is no; I finished them long enough ago that I have no recollection of details and am finding Moon’s backstory sufficient (and not intrusively infodumping). However, I’m not sure I’d recommend this book as she spends at least half the pages (out of the half of the book I’ve finished so far) on an extremely detailed survival story that would be over in a few more pages if not for an unbelievable piece of luck (following a setup that reminds me of a line from John M. Ford’s unscripted May These Events: “Too much security is the mark of the amateur.”)

Did anyone else see this: https://www.someecards.com/news/women/mansplaining-scientist/ ?
About 1:05:30 into the panel, the moderator starts to talk over the only female scientist on the panel, and an audience member shouts “Let her speak please!” and gets massive applause from the audience. It’s a case of “mainsplaining” that the moderator didn’t even seem to be aware of. If you go back a little further, he starts out by explaining her theories to the audience instead of asking her to explain them, which, frankly, really sucks.

(9) If I start riding again, I may want to get that. True, I only hit curbs, but that’s bad enough.

And, in other news, I finished watching Stranger Things for the Hugos last night. How on earth am I supposed to judge a work that’s almost 7 hours long against 2-hour works? I haven’t seen Hidden Figures yet, but of the others… if I’m going for the one that gave me the most joy, Ghostbusters wins. If I go for the one that twisted my mind the most, Arrival wins. If I go for the one that punched all the nostalgia buttons while making me cry, Rogue One wins. If I go for the one that made me laugh the most, Deadpool wins. If I go for the one that made me jump and hug my husband the most, Stranger Things wins. How do I judge between them? All of them were good!

How do other people judge? Do you come up with a specific set of criteria and stick with that? How does one determine the best when there are so many good choices? (and isn’t it telling that this is my first time asking this in my three years of Hugo voting?)

Thank you for the shout out for the market report as well as the Nebula showcase! Getting that report on the web so short story writers could use it instead of in the Bulletin, where it was perpetually being published out of date, has been one of the small victories of my administration.

So has the membership survey that we just got sent out after a year or two of saying yes we’ll do that anytime now. Over 400 members have responded so far and I’m hoping even more do, so if you are a member that hasn’t – please do so. (Also it gives you a chance to win a gift certificate usable on BOOKS.) (end momentary shill mode, sorry about that.)

Re the indie thing — we had a lot of programming aimed at indies & hybrids at the Nebs and I didn’t notice any dissing there. My mentee was indie-pubbed so we got a chance to talk about all the stuff the org offers indies.

The egregious stupidity of pretending anyone is saying writers should only be paid 6 cents and never more made me snort while I was drinking coffee and that hurt.

Speaking of the British election, I was just reading about Lord Buckethead, an intergalactic space lord, who stood for the same Maidenhead seat as Theresa May. His literature promised, “Strong, not entirely stable, leadership.”